ADM+S researchers recognised at 2023 Australian Good Design Awards
Authors Natalie Campbell
Date 12 September 2023
Congratulations to ADM+S researchers who have been recognised for their creative and innovative contributions to Australian design at the 2023 Australian Good Design Awards.
Established in 1958, the Australian Good Design Awards have been setting the international standard for good design for more than six decades and are recognised by the World Design Organization (WDO) as Australia’s peak international design endorsement program.
Held on 8 September 2023, the annual awards night celebrated projects from around the world in design, architecture, engineering, research, fashion, and social impact. Entries covered a vast range of sectors and industries, showcasing everything from product and building design, systems, and processes that support business and communities.
ADM+S researchers from the Monash Emerging Technologies Research Lab Prof Sarah Pink, Dr Debora Lanzeni, Prof Vaike Fors, Prof Yolande Strengers, and their colleagues Dr Melisa Duque and Assoc Prof Shanti Sumartojo, received a Good Design Award for their book ‘Design Ethnography’.
Design Ethnography presents an ethical, inclusive and interventional design research approach, tailored to the challenges of our world in crisis. The book draws on the shared design ethnographic practice of its six female authors over ten years, with a commitment to engender safe and trusted futures for people, planet, other species and technologies.
Dr Lanzeni explains, “it’s such an honour for our book to have this enormous recognition in the world of design. This methodology traverses disciplines and knowledge environments, aiming to move forward an engaged, committed and innovative mode of research in partnership with stakeholders.
What is essential is to grasp and understand the contemporary challenges that society and the planet are going through.”
Prof Sarah Pink took home two additional Gold Winner awards for her short film ‘Smart Homes for Seniors’ and research project ‘City Sensing Data Futures’.
Smart Homes for Seniors is a character-led design anthropological documentary which follows five senior households over 6 months as they experience and experiment with smart home technology. Directed by Prof Pink, the film advocates for co-designing technologies and related services with seniors themselves in their homes to better support wellbeing and ageing in place.
City Sensing Data Futures is a research collaboration between the Emerging Technologies Research Lab and City of Melbourne. The project created and demonstrated an ethics-based inclusive design for the capture and use of real-time city data in public spaces, which respects values of trust, privacy, transparency, open communication and care.
Prof Pink said, “our collaboration with the City of Melbourne and the amazing Tegan Kop, Gemma Baxter and Catherine Hill has been a real highlight for me, and to make it even better our project won a prestigious Gold Design Award.
I’m very proud have led our fantastic ETLab team of design ethnographers Debora Lanzeni, Melisa Duque, Shanti Sumartojo, Robert Lundberg, industrial designer Ilya Fridman, and enormous thanks to Bianca Vallentine for her stunning project management and design skills.”
All three projects are synonymous with the Awards’ philosophy of shaping a better world through creativity and innovation, and share the objective of Good Design to create a better, safer and more prosperous future through design excellence.
